House Leadership Backs Reforms Expected To Sweep Away Welfare
State With A Plan of Hope and Opportunity

Citing a declining public education system, a deteriorating family structure,
and an escalating crime rate, especially in low-income neighborhoods, the
House Republican Task Force on Empowerment and Race Relations (cochaired
by Reps. Jim Talent and J.C. Watts) has called a press conference in Washington,
D.C. on Tuesday, January 27 at 11 AM in 2118 Rayburn House Office Building.
Calling it "The Community Renewal Project," the Task Force will
discuss forthcoming legislation that will seek to revitalize the nation's
low-income communities. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is expected to attend
to announce his support for the ideas contained within the legislation,
which will be introduced in the House in early spring. Floor votes are expected
in the late spring.

Rather than impose an agenda on people living in low-income communities,
the Task Force says its agenda comes from meeting with people in local communities
to find out what should be done. The Task Force has outlined the following
premises as indispensable to community renewal:

The return of core values such as marriage, work, and faith necessary
for rebuilding families & neighborhoods.

The realization that federal programs cannot replace and cannot rebuild
families and neighborhoods.

All communities have individuals and neighborhood groups working to
rebuild their communities.

The federal government's role should be to remove tax and regulatory
obstacles, and give neighborhood groups and individuals the power to revitalize
their communities. "I applaud anything Congress can do to provide relief
for the overregulated, overtaxed inner cities," says Project 21 Chairman
Edmund Peterson. "This groundbreaking economic freedom is hopefully
just the beginning of Congress's attempts to get the government to release
its stranglehold on the economic life of the black community. The consequences
of big government 'compassion' are exasperating. The out-of-wedlock birthrate
nationally has risen from 6% in 1965 to 32% today. 70% of juveniles in state
reformatories, 60% of rapists and 72% of adolescent murderers grew up in
homes without fathers. Since 1960, public education expenditures have tripled
with little positive effect on our children. Twenty of the nation's largest
metropolitan areas had at least 3/4 of their employment growth outside of
urban centers. The Task Force on Empowerment and Race Relations clearly
seems interested in stepping out of the failed policies of the past into
a future of hope and opportunity."

"The Community Renewal Act represents a watershed in terms of how
we as a nation intend to improve the economic, social and moral condition
of America's most distressed communities," states Project 21 member
Brian Jones, President of the Center for New Black Leadership. "Rather
than resting our faith as a compassionate nation in a centralized, federal
bureaucracy removed from the hopes and needs of low-income people, House
Republicans have instead placed our civic faith in real, ordinary Americans.
The Act recognizes and confronts the reality that every American community
is filled with decent, upstanding people, who yearn to live better lives
for themselves, their families and their neighbors -- free from the moral
and regulatory obstacles that our federal bureaucracy has too often placed
in their paths."

The legislation proposed by the Task Force will be comprehensive. Congress
will establish up to 100 "renewal communities" to encourage entrepreneurship
by exempting many of the people living within those zones. There will also
be proposals granting low-income "scholarships" to needy students,
encouraging savings, and reforming housing policies. In addition, neighborhood
groups will be invited to play a greater role in restoring their communities.

Project 21 is the African-American leadership group that originally called
for the formation of the Task Force and empowerment legislation of this
type in its "Contract with Black America" proposed to the Congress
in January 1995 and formally accepted by Speaker Newt Gingrich and Majority
Leader Dick Armey in February 1995.